Telegraph blogs has been quiet for the last month or so and the silence has been eerie. For the last few weeks, the only blogs on the site were written by Dan Hannan, Judith Potts and Pete Wedderburn. According to Hannan, Telegraph blogs will cease to exist. The blog site, which has become something of a magnet for racists, Kippers and assorted ethno-nationalists is moving to the paper’s comments section. The reason for the change isn’t clear. It would be tempting to suggest it’s because the blogs have acquired a reputation for being a toilet bear pit and the paper is embarrassed by the numbers of racists it attracts. However, the Cat thinks the reason is more pragmatic.

The Telegraph has been charging people to view its content for some time now and if you look at more than 20 articles a month, you have to pay for them. The Cat suspects that once the bloggers have moved over to the comments section, you will have to pay to read their drivel. The comments section tells us:

The best comment, analysis and blogs from The Telegraph including Charles Moore, Peter Oborne, Boris Johnson, Dan Hodges, Fraser Nelson and Janet Daley

The “best comment and analysis”? Is that what one expects from Hatchet-job Hodges and Janet Daley? Is this some kind of a joke?

As for Hannan, he’s moving to a site called CapX, which proclaims on its homepage that it stands “for popular capitalism”… whatever that is. He’s also going to be writing for The Washington Examiner, a sister organ to the Weekly Standard, which is edited by neo-con darling and warmonger, William Kristol. Kristol was the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. Hannan will be in good company.

For six months, I kept track of comments on Telegraph blogs but gave up after I began to worry about its effect on my mental health.

5 responses to “Telegraph Blogs Is No More”

Just out of curiosity, is there any UK right-wing paper that has full and free access to its content, or is that strictly Guardian policy? Of course here across the big pond there are to my knowledge no newspapers that have the Guardian’s generosity, but then again to my knowledge there is no newspaper that has the Guardian’s public education mandate.

Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
Private Eye has been reporting the steady decline of the Telegraph for some time now, as more journalists are sacked and sections of the newspaper either closed down completely or seriously reduced. This has partly been to fund the pet projects of their ideas man, ‘Psycho’ Seiken, who’s keen on developing web content, but seems to know little and care less about actually running a newspaper. The closure of the Telegraph’s blogs appears to be part of this process.